Even before the Great Recession, U.S. employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back … the considerable gains in employment rates it had achieved during the 1990s, with major contractions in manufacturing … employment being a prime contributor to the slump. The U.S. employment "sag" of the 2000s is widely recognized but poorly …

. Adverse impacts of import competition on manufacturing employment, overall employment-population ratios, and income per capita … competition implies a reduction in the manufacturing employment-population ratio of 1.54 percentage points, which is 55% of the … employment rate. Reductions in population headcounts, which indicate net out-migration, register only for foreign-born workers …

-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in U.S. manufacturing employment. Transfer benefits payments for unemployment …